We Hunt Bear

By Adam Heggenstaller, Editor in Chief, Shooting Illustrated

The season begins with 22 of us staring at a net of rhododendron that rises steeply to meet a lead-colored sky. Before long we will thrash our way through the tangled trunks and branches, metering our toilsome progress with boisterous shouts of triumph and profanity, but for now utter silence rings in our ears. The seemingly impossible task that lies before us weighs heavily on our minds. Our hope is to bust a bear or two on this slope, but we’ll settle for finishing the drive with unbroken bones and rifles. The odds of either happening are substantially less than 50/50.

We know there are easier ways to kill a black bear. We could go west in the spring when the bruins are stuffing their stomachs with new grass, find one in the open and shoot it. Or head north and spend a few days lounging in a treestand until a trophy poses over a pile of syrup-laced pastries. Even team up with a dog man and let his hounds do most of the work for us. All are sound tactics but none are legal in Pennsylvania, so we embrace earning our bear rugs through lots of sweat, some blood and the occasional tear when a whippy rhododendron branch connects just right with a sensitive body part.

More than any of us care to admit, our struggles are as necessary to the hunt as the bears. We’re two dozen men rapidly approaching middle age who sometimes need to prove—to ourselves and our buddies—we can hunt as hard as we did in college. We still own this mountainside, extra pounds, desk jobs and kids notwithstanding. Bears choose to live in this mess, and we choose to hunt them here. Because we can.

And so with cries that echo through the narrow valley, half of us push forward, carrying Winchester and Marlin lever-actions, Remington 870s and 7600s, knowing any shot we get at a bear will be fleeting and iron-sight close. On the other side of a half-mile stretch of rhododendron, the rest of our friends wait expectantly in an evenly spaced line that stretches across the height of the mountain. They’re the ones with the best chances. We’ll drive any bears holed up in the dense cover between us right into their laps. Gunfire is never a sure sign of success, but it quickens our steps. A blast that connects with a bruin brings collective glory. Individual accomplishment takes a back seat to that of the team. We don’t do this alone.

The longtime leader of our gang groups his acquaintances—and oftentimes society as a whole—into two categories: those who hunt bear with us, and those who do not. It is at once a simple and profound measurement that speaks to the types of bonds forged only when success is limited but efforts are tremendous. Those of us crawling through the dank rhododendron on this late-November morning hunt bear. We owe it to one another to make opening day.

Find the Hotspots

by Mike Hanback

Field Editor

The start of the rut can vary by days or a week depending on region. Determine whether the "chase stage" is on by checking muddy fields or creek bottoms for big (buck) and small (doe) tracks that indicate running, then set up in an area like one described below.

Don't hunt over rubs.

Hunt funnels along buck travel routes between feeding and bedding areas laced with lots of rubs that indicate lots of deer traffic to up your odds of seeing bucks.

Transition zones are good bets.

Bucks prowl "break lines" between pines and hardwoods, rubbing and scraping as they move. Same goes for transitions between crops and woods: If you determine bucks are prowling the edge between those two zones, set a stand and sit tight.

The weather is your friend.

My research suggests bucks rut hardest when the temperature hovers between 25-30 degrees. Be sure to check scrapes one to two days after it rains or snows. If they've been pawed, hunt them.

Find fence lines.

Those that link crops with a point of woods 100-200 yards away can't be ignored. No good trees for a stand? Set up a blind on a downwind edge where the fence dumps into the woods. "Small" is the operative word&#151;don't build a Taj Mahal.

Establish a "pressure plan."

Since everybody and his brother hunts the rut, a thick-cover draw a half-mile or more off a crop field might produce results, even in the absence of rut sign. Once guns boom, bucks will find the sanctuary and pile into it.

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Like the fossilized skeletons of its ancestors displayed in the Smithsonian, a 12-foot alligator can be scary even when it's dead—something that Shooting Illustrated's Adam Heggenstaller learned in person during a gator hunt in Florida. Read More »

200

500

0-5

4,000

25

Number of feet a leopard can leap

$40,000-$100,000

The cost to hunt a lion in any of the classic destinations

30 to 50

Gallons of water consumed daily by an elephant

fast fact

Black bears feed up to 20 hours per day prior to winter denning to accumulate fat (energy). Adult males may gain more than 100 pounds in just a few weeks when acorn production is heavy. Their diet consists mainly of grasses, roots, berries and insects (75 percent of it, in fact). As omnivores, they also eat eggs, fish, mammals and carrion. But they aren’t very effective predators.